


In The Night (We Are Ourselves)

by doomedship



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 10:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21297833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: "I want to wake up beside you, David, not greet you in the kitchen like a flatmate."
Relationships: David Budd/Julia Montague
Comments: 19
Kudos: 143





	In The Night (We Are Ourselves)

**Author's Note:**

> I found the file for this buried in my unfinished stuff - I wrote it a year ago, and it just languished, so I thought I may as well finish it off and get it posted. It's been a long time since I dabbled in this fandom, so apologies for any rust.

She falls asleep with him most nights, but she never wakes with him.

He has been so very careful never to stay and she understands why. She can see the haunted look in his eyes sometimes when he looks at her, senses his bitter fear that whatever darkness lingers inside him will one day come out to get her too.

But she's growing tired of him sleeping in her spare bedroom as if he's some kind of lodger.

It's just she hasn't raised it yet.

In truth she's somewhat afraid of what he will say when she does, and she wonders whether it's really her place to push when he's the one bearing the scars. But she doesn't see how it can go on. Because it's more than just what bed he sleeps in; it's her not wanting him to carry on being so desperately afraid of himself, and that terrible feeling of knowing that he's always holding something back.

She is watching the sun rise on a Sunday morning when he emerges from the spare room, rubbing his eyes. She's draped in a silk robe and she's got her arms tightly folded as she faces out of the window. It's a familiar stance, one she adopts like armour in preparation for those tough conversations which no one really wants to have.

But he is oblivious to her intentions and he walks over to put his arms around her, and she almost loses her resolve right then, so soothed by the feeling of being enclosed in his arms. But she knows it's a false security that doesn't reflect the tumult she knows lies within.

"We need to talk," she says, and feels him stiffen, drawing back to look at her with guarded anticipation. Those words have been said to him before, she thinks, and wonders if it was Vicky that dealt that last blow.

"About what?" he asks, and it's obvious he thinks she's going to say something terrible, something that ends what they have and leaves him lying in the dust. She lays her hand on his arm, as if the reassurance she so desperately wants him to feel might bleed through her skin and ebb straight into his.

"I want to wake up beside you, David, not greet you in the kitchen like a flatmate."

She says it plainly, as is her manner, and she waits patiently for him to follow her meaning. A shutter falls across his face and her heart thumps as the tension twines its way between them like sinister creeping vines.

"You know why I can't, Julia. It's not safe," he says stiffly, and she can almost feel the stress rolling off him in waves.

"Then we need to get help," she says clearly. "This can't go on."

He looks at her like a hunted man; a target, running so afraid of being caught again. She shakes her head as her heart breaks a little for him, but she is far too used to dealing in difficult decisions to back off now. She of all people knows that sometimes the best thing is the thing that hurts the most.

"I can't," he says unevenly, and she slides her hands down his arms to take his hands.

"But we can," she says simply, and he looks at her like he doesn't believe her but lets her slide her arms around him anyway, and maybe even carry him along a bit in her conviction.

.....

Later she asks what happened with Vicky. She thinks it's important, somehow. That it's a missing piece of the puzzle she hasn't been allowed fit into their picture yet, and it bothers her. He looks away when she asks and she almost regrets it, thinking he will close in on himself instead, but then he sighs and turns back to her. His face is a mixture of regret and sadness that she'd love to wash away.

"The same thing that happened with you," he admits. One of his legs is bouncing anxiously; it's annoying but she doesn't comment, keeps her eyes fixed on his, her hand just resting on his forearm, a gentle weight that reminds him what he has.

Touch has always been a balm to their wounds; it is where they began and it's instinctively where she takes them now, her skin warm against his and a reassuring familiarity in the feel of his shifting muscles soothed under her palm.

"It started getting bad about a year after I left the army. I couldn't sleep, and when I did, I..." he breaks off, shakes his head, and she moves her thumb in reassuring circles as he struggles to find the words. She'll not interrupt; this moment is his and she cannot intervene. If he succeeds in passing a valley here it will be under his own steam, and she knows it can't be any other way.

"I'd see things from the war. It's... it's like all your worst nightmares coming to life and you can't get out, you're just trapped, and blind, and you've got no idea who you are any more. You'll do anything to make it stop, only..." a muscle jumps in his jaw. "Only it's not such a good idea when you've got a wife sleeping next to you and kids in the next room."

He shifts his right hand so he can hold hers, looking down at their interlaced fingers.

"Vicky couldn't handle it. I don't blame her one bit; she had the kids to think about and I refused her every time she begged me to see someone. I said it was because I'd never be able to work again if I had PTSD written all over my record, but... maybe that was just my excuse. We fell apart and I moved out. Saw the kids at weekends. You know the rest."

"I do," she says quietly. "And I think now, this time, perhaps it is time to get help."

He looks at her and in that moment it's like the torment of the entire world is lying in his eyes, like he wants her to say he doesn't have to do this, but he knows she's not going to give him that out.

"I'm afraid of what I'll find if I do," he confesses brokenly. "I don't want to go through it all. Not again."

She looks at him levelly then, and though the urge is there she doesn't descend into platitudes and tell him that it's going to be okay, that he's strong and she's loving, and that it'll turn out all right in the end. It's not a promise she can keep and despite what the world might think she's not in the habit of making false promises.

Instead she grips his hand hard in one of hers and looks him in the eye as she tells him simply, "it's your choice."

And she wants to be clear about this; it is his choice and she will make no ultimatum, and set no condition on what he must do next to ensure her love for him. Because, she thinks, she will not be the trophy for his good behaviour; his choice must be for him, or it will be a hollow choice that rests on nothing but empty space.

So she smiles and rests her forehead against his, his breath tickling her face as she smooths her hand over his cheek.

"You don't have to decide now. And you should know I'm going to be right beside you whatever you decide," she says. "No conditions on that."

He's startled by her words, and moved, and she can see the slight shine in his eyes before he closes them and presses his lips to hers, and she's lost all over again in the feel of him.

.....

She is quietly proud when he makes his first appointment and sticks to it.

She isn't an idiot and she knows that change will be slow, and in fact recovery might never come at all.

Though it's what started this process in the first place she makes her peace with the fact that she might never be able to lie there beside him and watch him sleep. She refuses to add her own expectations on top of the burdens he already carries and tells him repeatedly that she's going to stick with him whether he gets any better or not.

She thinks maybe she makes him more of a vow than any she ever made on her wedding day.

But regardless of her attempts to remain level headed, she experiences the full onslaught of rampant hope when one evening, a couple of months in, he tells her hesitantly he's going to stay in her bed that night.

She relishes the feeling of lying entangled with him, the sweat still drying on their skin as they drift off in quiet bliss. Some part of her tells her to memorise the feeling, because God knows everything is fragile and she can't afford to take anything for granted.

But she wakes up in the morning and for the first time he's lying there in front of her, watching her through bright and clear blue eyes.

"Morning," he says, and she feels a slow smile spread across her face as she reaches for him. Mission accomplished, she thinks.

But it's pride, of course, which must necessarily be followed by a fall.

He sleeps beside her tentatively for a week, then two. But on an otherwise innocuous Monday night he goes to bed with a lot on his mind and she's lying on her side just a bit too close to him.

It's none so bad as that awful night in the hotel, marked out in her memory as perhaps the lowest point she can remember. But he wakes from a nightmare thrashing and fighting and it takes him minutes to realise that she's staring up at him from the floor with all the wind knocked out of her lungs.

"We'll get crash mats," she says bracingly, once he's got past the moment of utter horror and she's picked herself up and dusted off. But whatever line she takes, he knows it's not going to stop him tearing himself up over this.

They're sitting up in bed and he's devastated, and he wants to go back to the spare room immediately but she's managed to persuade him to just stay with her until the moment of shock and fear has passed, knowing it would be disastrous to let this balloon up in his mind alone in the spare room.

"I could have really hurt you," he says, sounding halfway to tears and more than halfway to fury.

"Don't be absurd, I'm not that old," she says. He looks at her with deathly anguish and she gives up on humour.

"David, we always knew there would be setbacks. But this isn't a reason to give up."

"What happens if the next time I've got my hands around your throat and you can't wake me up?" He says angrily, his fists curling and uncurling erratically.

"What if tomorrow I get sepsis and die?" She says flippantly. "I'm not afraid of sleeping next to you, David. You haven't had a night like that in months."

It's not enough though and he sleeps in the spare room for the rest of the week. She's frustrated, and tired, and she wants so much for it to be easier for him that it turns into a physical ache.

It affects their sex life too, and after days of him barely touching her she's uptight and wound up. He's tense and disagreeable too and she really doesn't like that he's been raiding the beer shelf in the fridge far more often than before. She cancels the order from their next weekly delivery but she knows that's in no way an actual fix.

A week later she gets home one evening after he's had his latest appointment and finds him pacing the flat like a caged animal and her heart sinks.

"Everything all right?" She says carefully, putting her bag down on the hall table and walks through, resisting the urge to fold her arms.

He glances at her and says nothing, but she can sense his unbridled agitation, so visible in the tense lines of his body in motion. She purses her lips, and runs her hand along the back of the couch as she walks over to him.

She sheds her coat and stands in front of him, blocking his path, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

His eyes flick between each of hers and he sets his jaw.

"I can't stand this," he grates out. "All this over-thinking, I just... I need..."

She doesn't make him articulate it. She already knows what he needs, can feel it aching in the air between them like a physical presence. She doesn't drop his gaze as she reaches her fingers up and unbuttons her blouse, shrugs out of it, drops it on the floor in overt invitation and in challenge.

She sees the moment his eyes darken and a muscle jumps in his jaw as he looks all the way down her body and then back up to her face, acknowledging what she is offering and deciding whether he dares to take it.

She waits for him to cross the gap between them and to reach for her.

He touches her then with a fervour that's usually reserved for near-death experiences. His hands slide over her hips and pull her roughly up against him so they fit together like pieces in a jigsaw, and she gasps quietly against his mouth when he reaches down and strips her trousers and underwear from her in a few sharp movements, fiercely claiming her mouth in an unyielding kiss.

Her heart speeds up with a strange feeling of reckless abandon when after a short while he spins her around, and presses her forward against the back of the couch, still fully dressed save for the rasp of his zip being lowered, small rustling adjustments that make what he's about to do possible. She doesn't quite know how to feel about it, the strange tang of unfamiliarity about what he's doing bleeding with her undeniable lust for him, and her physical pleasure at the unexpected dominant treatment she's never received from anyone before now.

It's not tender or gentle but there's enough trust between them that this is okay. She's a little on edge, a little startled, but she's willing to give him what he needs right now, which is for once to not be so desperately in control of himself.

And in truth, her legs are unsteady and trembling and she's already gasped out her pleasure by the time he's stiffening and pitching forward against her back, his hands finding hers on the back of the couch and tightly grasping them with a gentleness that's at odds with what they've just done.

He breathes heavily against her shoulder and then he kisses her there, slow and soft, and she recognises that now the strange wound up energy that's been eating him up like a plague has been burned away, he is left to feel something far more ambiguous and uncertain. Slowly, he turns her around and she sees a hesitant fear in his eyes as he tries to gauge her response to him, her feelings about his allowing such base urges to rule him when she's sure they have come as a surprise even to him. 

She raises her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth quirk up slightly. The relief on him is palpable and he leans his forehead against hers gently, cupping her cheek as he studies her through wide and complex eyes.

She puts her arms around him but she knows she must be clear.

"This can't be how it is," she says after a moment. "You can't just hold me at arm's length until you can't stand it any more."

"I know," he says, and she believes the contrition in his voice. "I'm sorry."

.....

The dust settles and he is more or less true to his word. He stops being so rigid and withdrawn after the sofa incident and she's relieved that once again he seems ready to touch her freely.

Sessions with his therapist are not great leaps forward. Often he comes home from them frustrated or bitter or exhausted, and sometimes saying he doesn't think it's helping at all. Rarely is he pleased with the experience. But he does keep on going, and she is proud of his dogged resolve in seeing it through.

One day be comes back in a particularly pensive mood and sheds his jacket and belt with distinct grim resignation. She waits for him to volunteer the information rather than her having to probe, and instead starts to lay the table for dinner. He comes out to join her and begins to set out cutlery broodingly.

"She thinks I should make peace with Vicky," he finally says grudgingly, and Julia's eyebrows rise. She digests that for a moment and pauses, halfway through a napkin fold.

"I didn't think you had anything unresolved with Vicky," she says levelly. She's trying not to be something as unsophisticated as jealous or resentful; she is far too old and in far too deep with him for that to be appropriate, but it doesn't stop the twinge of discomfort when she thinks about him setting off to see his ex-wife to settle old differences.

"She says I have unresolved guilt over how it ended with her," he says, sitting down and turning a glass tumbler round and round.

"Oh," says Julia. She supposes it makes sense; how is he supposed to move past his issues if he still thinks the person he first hurt with them blames him for it? She turns back to the pot of risotto she's been tending to, and frowns over it as she tries to work out what she should say.

She doesn't hear him come up behind her and jumps when she feels his hands rest gently on her hips.

"If I go and see her it's because I want to move forward with you, not because I've got the slightest interest in going back to all that with her. You know that, don't you?" he says, and she immediately feels a creeping sense of guilt that she's been that obvious. She turns around, his hands gliding round to rest on her lower back.

"Of course I know that," she sighs, looping her arms around his neck. "And I do think you should go. But I can't help wanting to march over and warn her off you all the same."

He smiles at that and kisses her softly, apologetically even, and her eyes flicker shut.

When all's said and done and whatever history there is she hopes that Vicky proves herself to be sweet and forgiving as Julia has always suspected she might be, and gives him the absolution it seems he so clearly needs.

.....

He gets back from Vicky's on a Sunday night. He's dropped the kids off with her and stayed for dinner too so they could talk, and not that she'll admit it but Julia's been at home more or less watching the clock until she hears the door click at ten to ten.

She watches him with wide, questioning eyes as he comes in and joins her on the settee, heaving out a big sigh as he does.

He puts his arm around her automatically and she gladly leans in to press her ear against his chest, idly observing the double thud of his heartbeat in steady beats, and waits for him to tell her.

"She said she doesn't blame me for what happened," he begins. "Never did. She just had to make sure the kids were safe, and when I was refusing help and spiralling so badly, she knew she had to leave."

She pauses, tangling her fingers in the soft wool of his jumper.

"But you already knew that," she says carefully. "Didn't you?"

He hums quietly. "I suppose," he says slowly. "But it's good to know she's not holding it against me. The breakdown of our marriage, I mean." He seems to struggle, then, as if deciding whether to say something more, and she tilts her head to look up at him probingly and he catches her eye.

"She said she's glad I'm getting help, and that she wishes I'd got it sooner, because if I had then she would still be with me now," he admits, and she feels that same discomfort, an awkwardness mixed with a fierce urge to bite Vicky's head off. They both know, of course, that what Vicky means is that now he is moving past his demons, she would go back to him, if he wanted it.

"And do you wish that too?" she asks, wondering if she's really prepared for the answer. He doesn't give one for a second, studying somewhere in the middle of the ceiling instead, which does nothing to settle her nerves.

"It's not that black and white," he says quietly. "I wish I could have spared her and the kids all that pain, sure. But when she said it I knew that we'd never be anything more than a set of memories to each other again. Because it made me feel so much hope, only it wasn't hope about her, it was about us. I don't wish all of this away, not for one second."

She closes her eyes in relief and in a sudden surge of affection for him that's almost frightening in its intensity. She puts her hand on his shoulder and tilts her head to kiss him and she feels his fingers slide behind her head as he deepens it, something new and powerful unfurling between them like the wind filling a sail. This must be, she thinks, what commitment feels like.

They end up undressed and tangled on the settee before long and it's unimaginably different to the last time they had sex involving the couch. There is no desperation, no frustration, only warmth and tenderness and a quiet sense of hope.

She might be suspicious of Vicky but she's also grateful, overridingly so. Vicky had a power over David that she hasn't used; there were aces up her sleeve which never made the table. And in truth, she can't bring herself to begrudge Vicky one last attempt to bring her family back together.

But moving on is moving forwards, and as she watches him sleep beside her that night she thinks that slowly, quietly, they have come further than she ever dared to imagine might be possible.

.....

She sees Vicky the next week.

It's Saturday, and they're supposed to be picking up the kids for the day, but David's been called into work unexpectedly and she's had to go alone.

It's awkward.

Vicky greets her in the doorway with her arms folded and a half-smile on her face. She looks a bit drawn, as if things have been weighing on her mind, and she looks like she doesn't know what to say when she finds Julia on her own on the doorstep.

Julia does what she does best, and powers through, greeting her with her best Home Office smile and just about stopping herself from extending her hand for a vigorous photo-op handshake.

"Are the kids ready?" Julia says, with somewhat forced gusto.

"Erm, yep, they're just grabbing their things- Ella! Charlie! Julia's here," Vicky calls up the stairs, rubbing her hands up and down her forearms as she glances uncomfortably back at Julia.

"Look, I'm sure Dave's told you-" the word 'Dave' grates on her ears; it's why she never calls him that "-about our conversation. I just wanted you to know, I wasn't trying to undermine what you and he have, I just-"

"You don't have to explain," Julia says quickly. Her brow furrows and she regards Vicky with a mixture of compassion and irritation. "It's your family. I know why you said it. If there was a chance you had to take it."

"Well, you should know that I've never seen him surer than he was when he said he just wants a future with you," Vicky says, and there's a kind of martyred acceptance about her that sets Julia's teeth on edge, even as she tries to banish the uncharitable feeling. 

It doesn't feel like winning, anyway. It's never actually been about a choice between Vicky or her, about happy families or broken homes. It's about something much bigger than either of them, and the two of them are just caught up in the storm together. She supposes they might as well ride it out together, if they can.

The kids come thundering down the stairs and the tense moment is passed. Julia glances back just once on the walk to the car and a thin moment of understanding passes between her and Vicky. This might not be comfortable for either of them but it's what they have, and they might both love the same man but they've all been hurt too much already to add to each other's scars.

The happy chatter in the car distracts her from her melancholy thoughts; Charlie's asking her PPO to let him use the radio intercom and Ella's asking him if he wants to see her latest scab because it's big and shaped like Antarctica. It's mad and it's boisterous and it's a breath of fresh air from the stress and strain of everything she's been worrying about on David's behalf.

She things that maybe she could learn a thing or two from these kids who live and breathe excitement in every moment, and let themselves be happy even when the world sets on fire all around them.

.....

He still has nightmares regularly. His psych has told him he may always have them but what's important is that he knows he can deal with them, and that he won't hurt Julia in the midst of them.

He doesn't tend to wake from them blind and panicking now. She knows not to try and reach for him first, because it's never absolute that he's not lost in some dark part of his own mind when she feels him jerking awake. But usually now he'll grip her hand under the sheet as soon as he comes to almost as a matter of reflex, and she squeezes back and doesn't let go until one or both of them is sound asleep again.

This is not a reality she ever expected for her life. A year and a half ago if someone had told her that clawing her way to number ten would be completely sidelined in favour of walking the long road back from PTSD with her troubled ex-service boyfriend, she would have laughed and told them to piss off back to the psych ward.

But here she is. It's not that she doesn't still want to advance her career, it's just that she's now got something that feels like it matters at least as much, if not more. And with David there's a tangibility that makes it all the more seductive than the abstract promise of power, which inevitably comes in a poisoned chalice anyway.

It's a whole new world of selflessness she has walked into, and sometimes it throws her; this is not the life she set out to lead.

But when she wakes up with his arm draped over her belly and his low voice telling her he loves her in her ear it's easy to believe it's all been worth it.


End file.
